You may have noticed that Roxio was absent from that list. That’s because I was listing solutions that matter, and with 480p-only capture, Roxio’s Game Capture doesn’t matter (at least to you, my discerning audience of roughly 5 people).

Honestly, this isn’t really a big deal to me, as you can already stream to Twitch free through FMLE. But I’m sure many people will appreciate the bundle. Plus, it’s awesome to see Twitch integration appearing in products.

The software seems less janky than Hauppauge’s, but only time will tell.

Outstanding Concerns

The product site states “Internet connection required for capture…” Um, wut?

The unit is bus powered – that means it has no power supply, and is powered by the 5v it’s getting via USB from your computer. I worry about what this means for the signals. Is the TV output just a passive split off of the input?

No mention of bitrate options. This video seems to show 720p at 15Mbps – that’s pretty solid, depending on the encoding.

Similar concern for sharing/exporting – no idea what bitrate.

PC only. Sad Mac Panda.

No cables included – not a big deal, but still worth noting.

Conclusion

On the surface, this looks like a better option than the Hauppauge HD-PVR 2 – same price, more features. But I’m not going to say for certain since I have zero experience with Roxio capture devices.

Speaking of which: Kickstarter’s pretty big these days, and I’m an expert in gaming capture. How would you feel about Kickstarting a gaming capture showdown? Unfortunately I’m not rich enough to fund it myself, and nobody sends me review copies of anything. It’d be sort of like this, except less well done.

Let me know in the comments, or on Twitter, or just yell out your window.

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Update 9/24/2012

According to this review, it’s not as great as it seems. The component dimming issue he mentions probably means my power concern is valid – not enough power for an active split. Passively splitting an analog signal would cause visible dimming. Passively splitting HDMI is almost worse – it’ll work in a lot of setups, but sometimes it won’t. Also, a passive split won’t handle HDCP properly – fine for games, but when you flip over to Netflix, you’ll have to rewire your Xbox setup. So if this device does use passive splitting (which I suspect it does), that’s a pretty big strike against it in my book.

Unfortunately, this review doesn’t actually explain either of these major issues. It also doesn’t mention that you can’t capture 1080p over component. And there’s no mention of bitrates beyond “Bitrate is user determined.”

The audio problems are troubling – a loss of volume and bass? If it happened on the component input, then that could be explained by a passive split – but the review doesn’t note which input has the audio problems.

Either I’m an asshole, or this is a really shallow review.

Probably both.

Whatever, I stand by my Hauppauge recommendation until I can personally review both units. Which will never happen because no one cares.